Prior art systems such as are disclosed in Rolfes U.S. Pat. No. 7,210,401, which is directed to a single cup pod beverage brewer, generally employ upper and lower heads of known designs, with the lower head including a chamber therein for holding the coffee or other beverage flavoring pod, wherein the upper and lower heads are movably engagable with one another to close the beverage flavoring chamber and to pass a liquid, such as heated water, through the chamber and the beverage flavoring pod therein. In general, such systems are so designed that the lower head is movable between a pod receiving, or pod loading, position at which the beverage flavoring pod is inserted by a user into the chamber formed in the lower head, a beverage flavoring position at which the actual beverage flavoring operation is effected, and a pod disposal, or pod discharge, position at which the waste pod is then ejected from the chamber in the lower head into a waste bin.
The Rolfes system includes a pod support plate or disc within the chamber of the lower head, upon which pod support disc the beverage flavoring pod generally rests. Such pod support disc is attached to a spring loaded stem construction that is intended to hold the support disc tightly to a sealing o-ring within the chamber to prevent leakage when the lower head is in a beverage flavoring position and to operate to forcibly eject the pod from such chamber into a pod waste bin when the lower head is moved to the pod disposal position.
The system and method of the present invention is an improvement over the pod ejection system of beverage flavoring devices such as that disclosed in Rolfes U.S. Pat. No. 7,210,401 and the use therein and therewith of an electro-mechanical solenoid kicker to strike the ejector stem to effect pod removal or ejection. The Rolfes system, as stated in the specification and in claim 1 of Rolfes U.S. Pat. No. 7,210,401, makes use of “a pod ejection means for removing a pod after infusion from the lower head by electro-mechanically propelling a pod from the chamber when the lower head is oriented vertically, thereby totally removing a pod from contact with the lower head for disposal, wherein said vertical pod ejection means further comprises, a pod ejection solenoid striking said ejection disc stem such that a pod is driven completely away from the lower head.”
Two common problems have typically been encountered with the Rolfes electro-mechanical pod ejection system and method, which problems involve 1) the electromagnet-solenoid and 2) the spring that is intended to hold the pod support disc, sometimes also referred to as the pod ejection disc, to a sealing o-ring inside the lower brew chamber.
In the Rolfes system, when the pod ejection solenoid operates in the manner as noted hereinabove to cause the striker pin to strike the pod ejection disc stem, coffee residue from the brew chamber is frequently transferred onto the solenoid shaft, which residue, over time, builds up inside the solenoid body itself and dries up. Such buildup of residue causes the shaft to stick, and to eventually seize, and thus prevents the solenoid striker pin from effectively striking the pod ejection disc. Such seizure of the shaft causes the waste pod removal feature of the machine to become disabled and to fail. As a consequence of such failure, the waste pod is not properly ejected and is, instead, often thereafter undesirably presented to the next user when the lower head is moved to the pod loading position for installation by such next user of a new beverage flavoring pod and for initiation of a new beverage flavoring cycle.
Also, with the Rolfes system, the spring loading that can be employed is necessarily limited in that the force of the solenoid striker must be able to readily overcome such spring loading in order to permit sufficient movable extension of the ejection stem and the attached pod support disc so as to effect ejection of the waste pod. Consequently, the compression spring tension holding the pod support disc to the sealing o-ring mounted in the lower brew chamber during the actual beverage flavoring is generally of a relatively low value and is often of insufficient force to effectively maintain a seal and to keep the brew chamber from weeping coffee while brewing, especially since the spring force cannot be appreciably increased without degrading or negating the ejection force from the electro-mechanical solenoid when it strikes the ejection disc stem and rendering the pod ejection system inoperable.